Saucon business manager not hopeful about recovering taxes

He says predecessor's projections were inaccurate.

May 11, 2004|By Kevin Pentón Of The Morning Call

Saucon Valley School District's new business manager is not optimistic the district will recover by June 30 about $917,000 in real estate taxes the district's previous business manager had projected would be paid.

The new business manager, David Bonenberger, told the Saucon Valley School Board on Monday that given payment experience, the district should not expect to receive much more than $100,000 before the end of this school year.

As the board considers a $30,484,000 budget for the school year beginning July 1 that could raise the 37.53 millage rate by at least a mill, Bonenberger said one of his next tasks is to determine how much of the revenue shortfall is because of taxpayer delinquency and how much could be an inaccurate projection made by the previous business manager, Julie Kurtz.

As the previous board determined this year's budget last June, Kurtz told them she had "discovered" an additional $445,000 in revenue because her earlier real estate tax revenue estimates had been too conservative.

Based on her estimates that the district would gain an additional $100,000 in earned income tax and $345,000 in Lower Saucon Township property taxes, the board restored $370,400 in cuts of various initiatives that had been eliminated to prevent a tax increase.

Bonenberger, who said the district is short $605,000 in property taxes and $312,000 in interim real estate taxes, must determine how much the district has spent to this date and project how much it may spend by the end of June to get a clearer view of its financial picture.

"These are questions we don't know the answers to right now," Bonenberger said.

Kurtz resigned in August, four months before the state auditor general's office began its investigation into the district's finances.

After Bonenberger made his revelations on Monday, the board heatedly debated their implications, including whether revenue projections for the next school year can be trusted.

Several school directors, including Joel Katz and Eric Schenkel, said Bonenberger should be allowed to continue his investigations before school directors continue to argue.

"We don't have all the answers right now," Schenkel said. "We're not dealing with creative accounting with David [Bonenberger,] so let's allow him to come back to us with reality."

Several school directors, some of whom were not on the board last year, also expressed surprise when Bonenberger said $562,400 had been taken out of the district's $2.5 million general fund to balance this year's $28.7 million budget.

"You have to use caution in using the fund balance," Bonenberger said.

In other business Monday, the board approved a reorganization of grades for the district's three schools.

Starting in September, the elementary school will hold kindergarten through fifth grade, the middle school will be Grades 6 through 8, and the high school will be Grades 9 through 12. The middle school is currently Grades 7 through 9.